Under the auspices of the Federal Information Services and Applications Council (FISAC), which reports to the Subcommittee on Computing, Information, and Communications R&D, and the Interagency Council for Statistical Policy (ICSP), which consists of the heads of the 14 primary Federal statistical agencies, an interagency FedStats team is promoting access to and appropriate use of Federal statistical information through advanced information technology. At present, the team's efforts are concentrated on developing partnerships with academic groups in their efforts to win NSF grants from the KDI, Digital Library, and Digital Government programs. The NRC Computer Science and Telecommunications Board will hold a workshop on Feb. 9-10 on Information Technology Research for Federal Statistics, and the results of the workshop should provide direction for the creation of further partnerships.

Separately, but consistent with these activities, there are a number of metadata-related activities being conducted by the Federal statistical agencies or other organizations which are of direct importance to the creation of a National Statistical Information Infrastructure. These will also be discussed.